I was also fan of Brave but even they've begun selling-out. Between their cross-sales ("earn while browsing"), telemetry and now selling ad-block exceptions (eg youtube) -- they've gone downhill quickly. Their performance has gone down (relative to other Chromium options) at a similar pace.
Regarding alternatives --
We're reaching a point where there aren't many, as Firefox (Gecko) and Safari (Apple WebKit) is about the only remaining rendering engine outside of Chromium and Firefox/WebKit's performance is so much further behind / most sites are primarily designed against Chromium engines at this point.
Next, it depends on whether you're referring to Linux or Windows. Chrome is not great under Linux due to several privacy policies that cannot be configured.
If using Windows, Chrome Canary (Google's development version) comes with an administrative policy that you can configure to make Chrome one of the lightest/least obtrusive browsers. I know this is hard to believe, but the more configurable something is, often the more you can lock-it-down to the point of being less obtrusive than the others.
Therefore -- If you're willing to spend about an hour with configuring admin policies, Chrome Canary is the performance/lightweight winner.
No matter which browser you use, if it's Chromium based, you'd obviously add uBlock Origin and some key adblock subscriptions.
If you really want to avoid Google, you can switch to generic Chromium (non-Google Chrome, but the Chromium project). That's essentially the next best performer after Chrome.
I know that neither of these options are as sexy or sound innovative; however, the people that truly know the tech -- the people who are not out there writing click-bait articles like "which browser is best for privacy"; they'll tell you we're reaching a point where it's hard to avoid Chromium at this point in time and in Chromium, the project itself is the slimmest/cleanest -- while Chrome is the most performant.
On Linux, my preferred browser is probably Epiphany based on a GNOME WebKit engine. Nice for Linux but not ubiquitous and ultimately Chromium is going to prevail there, as well.
...This post can go on discussing dozens of random re-branded versions of Chromium/Gecko (eg - Vivaldi, Slim, Comodo, etc) that are supposedly more "privacy based"; however, at the end of the day, they're all Chromium and if your goal is light/privacy-based, then Chromium + uBlock/etc is always going to win out and this discussion becomes somewhat of a fool's errand...
At this point .. perhaps the more relevant question is "which ad blocking lists do you subscribe to".